
Class 
Book.. 












Copyright N?_ 



CBEBIGUT DEPOSffi 



®lj* Smmnrtal Aim 



®h? Jmmortal Aim 



By 



GEORGE HOOPER FERRIS, D. D, 

n 

Author of 

" The Formation of the New Testament " 

"Elements of Spirituality" 

"The Soul's Christmas*' 




PHILADELPHIA 

THE GRIFFITH AND ROWLAND PRESS 

BOSTON CHICAGO ST. LOUIS NEW YORK 

LOS ANGELES TORONTO WINNIPEG 









Copyright, 1918, by 
GUY C. LAMSON, Secretary 



Published March, 191S 



MAR -2 1918 
©GLA481892 



CONTENTS 



?A(,B 
I 

The Immortal Aim i 



II 
" Life " 15 

III 
" A Life to Let " 29 



IV 
The Light of Immortality " 43 



<< 



V 
Keeping Lent 57 



THE IMMORTAL AIM 



" If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection 
of the dead."— Phil. 3 : «. 



THE IMMORTAL AIM 

THERE is a type of man to whom immortality 
is simply an aim. If you were to stop him in 
the midst of the activities of life and ask him if he 
believes in a future existence, he would find the 
question a hard one to answer. Perhaps he would 
tell you to-day that he does, and to-morrow that he 
doubts. He sees no supernal visions. He has 
never entered into the philosophical arguments. He 
has not encountered any scientific objections. All 
that has come to him has been an experience. He 
has found something of imperishable worth in the 
common tasks of life, and has attached himself to 
that. Immortality ? If by that you mean a distant, 
generalized, finished form of existence, set over 
against this one by way of contrast, he cannot say 
that he believes in it. But if you mean the discovery 
of elements of untold possibility in the dull and 
prosaic things of earth, he believes in that. 

We have an excellent example of this type of 
man in " The Pilgrim's Progress." His name is 
" Mr. Honest." His experience is very different 
from that of the others described in the great 
allegory. One day there was a Post in the town 

3 



4 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

that inquired for Mr. Honest. The following com- 
munication was delivered to his hands : " Thou art 
commanded to be ready against this day seven-night, 
to present thyself before thy Lord at his Father's 
house." Mr. Honest is not disturbed very much 
by the message. He says to his friends, " As for 
my honesty, it shall go with me." The end of the 
story is described as follows : " When the day that 
he was to be gone was come, he addressed himself 
to go over the river. Now, the river at that time 
overflowed its banks in some places ; but Mr. Honest 
in his lifetime had spoken to one Good Conscience 
to meet him there, the which he also did, and lent 
him his hand and so helped him over. The last 
words of Mr. Honest were ' Grace reigns.' So 
he left the world." 

We all know men of that type. If belief means a 
formulated conviction they cannot be called " be- 
lievers." They follow something sure, amid the 
perils and problems of life. They are steadied by 
the certainty of a moral value. " Honesty will go 
with me," they say. Honesty cannot die. No 
swollen river can drown honesty. In this confidence 
they go through life, and meet the experience of 
death. They wave their last farewell as non- 
chalantly as if they expected to be back again on 
the morrow. 

Such men teach us that immortality is an aim, 
as well as a possession. We have been ruled too 
much in our religious thinking by the thought of 



THE IMMORTAL AIM 5 

possession. Man has a soul, we say. He has a 
personality. He has duties toward his neighbor 
and toward God. He has right and wrong im- 
pulses. He has virtues to cultivate and vices to 
abandon. So we go on with our inventory of his 
spiritual goods. But if some one happens to ask 
where the owner is we are in trouble. He is not 
to be seen anywhere around the establishment. We 
seek him in some back room, but he is not there. 
We have had a great deal of trouble over this mat- 
ter of late. Some people, who had been study- 
ing psychology, felt that they were about to discover 
the soul. They were deceived by some big words. 
They came across something called a " subliminal 
consciousness/' and went raking around in that try- 
ing to discover the whereabouts of the soul. Some- 
how it never came to light. The fact is that man 
does not have a soul; he is one. His personality 
is himself. His virtues and vices are relationships, 
not possessions. The only sense in which they can 
be called possessions will come to light later on in 
our discussion. 

If we bear this in mind we will understand the 
people who almost unconsciously enter into im- 
mortality. They find something in the ordinary 
life that is timeless. It is utterly unrelated to the 
onward moving years. It elevates us above the pass- 
ing and the transitory. It keeps us from being- 
afraid of the terror by night or the arrow that flieth 
by day. There is no great achievement of moral vie- 



THE IMMORTAL AIM 

tory that does not contain within it this element of 
timelessness. There is no sacrifice of love that does 
not carry in its wake something of timeless worth. 
Such things are not carried away by the swollen 
river. " My honesty will go with me." Surely 
the will of man ought to have something to say 
about this problem. Faithfulness will bring its 
reward, even if men refuse to give it the name of 
" faith." 

Take the " Invictus " of Henley. We need not 
go into the personal experiences that wrung the 
words from him. The story of pain and disappoint- 
ment will add nothing. 

Out of the night that covers me, 
Black as the pit from pole to pole, 

I thank whatever gods may be 
For my unconquerable soul. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance 
I have not winced or cried aloud; 

Under the bludgeonings of chance 
My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears 
Looms but the horror of the shade, 

And yet the menace of the years 
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. 

It matters not how strait the gate, 
How charged with punishment the scroll, 

I am the master of my fate; 
I am the captain of my soul. 



THE IMMORTAL AIM 7 

Those words have been called "pagan" and 
" Stoical." Again and again it has been pointed 
out that they come short of " belief." Be it so ! 
To me they are an expression of the majesty of 
the human soul, rising above the wreck of circum- 
stance. They seem to cry, with Bunyan's character, 
" My honesty will go with me." The man who is 
not honest may think he believes, but he does not. 
He may repeat creeds, and sing songs, and cry, 
" Lord ! Lord ! " but you know him to be an un- 
believer by signs more sure than these. The worker 
of iniquity, the man who measures his successes 
and defeats, his pleasures and griefs, his duties and 
disappointments, by the desires of the passing mo- 
ment, is the man who does not believe in immor- 
tality. The man who sacrifices reality to appear- 
ance ; the man who cringes before a monstrous and 
enthroned wickedness ; the man who despairs of the 
ultimate triumph of downtrodden goodness — these 
are the men who do not believe. They have lost 
the eternal in the temporal. 

This, therefore, would be my advice to all who 
are doubtful and perplexed about this matter : Strive 
for some aim of justice, of love, of truth, of purity, 
of right. There may come a time when you will 
realize what is involved in such an act of dedication. 
You awake to the unworthiness of trying, in the 
slightest measure, to make these great aims a means 
to your own happiness or welfare. They are some- 
thing beyond you. They break through the narrow 



8 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

limitations of your mortal existence. They bring 
you into the presence of a life of objective worth, of 
undying beauty. If you try to describe them you 
will find yourself unconsciously using the words 
" eternal " and " immortal. " No other words are 
adequate. Do not fear. Use them. They were 
meant for use. They express something real. The 
fact is that beyond the borders of our own mortal 
life there opens up to us a spiritual existence that 
has its source in the ultimate depths of the universe. 
We cannot live as we ought without putting the 
aims of this spiritual existence above our own 
desires and happiness. 

When we do this another thing happens. We dis- 
cover that this dedication of self is the way to 
realize self. We find our own lives in the process 
of losing them. We enter on a truer, vaster, more 
genuine existence when we seek to serve these larger 
purposes. The aims of the race, the deeper mean- 
ings of existence, have been taken up into ourselves. 
We have become one with that great totality of 
moral worth and spiritual power which men have 
called " God." So we escape the bondage of the 
mortal and human and enter the undying life. That 
a man can do all this and not think the matter out 
I am firmly convinced. Such a man is unconsciously 
a believer. He is not afraid of the destructive forces 
of the universe, because there has come to him a 
fortifying consciousness of something that cannot 
die. 



THE IMMORTAL AIM 9 

If this experience does not come to us in some 
form we cannot organize our work. Organization 
is unity. It must take place under some head. It 
implies some answer to the question, " What is the 
chief end of man ? " It is precisely the postponing 
of this question that is the cause of the confusion 
of our day. Men are seeking absorption in work 
without any clear conception of the meaning and 
object of work. Work, to be sure, is an important 
essential to human existence. It is our point of 
contact with reality. It is the body of society. But 
society is a spirit as well as a body. Life cannot 
be entirely taken up by work. Man must interpret, 
and plan, and hope, and love, and think, and look 
behind his activities. If he does not do this he will 
find himself lost in utter confusion. 

Is not this what has happened to many in our 
day? They have found nothing that transcends 
the monotony, the disappointment, the caprice, the 
chance, the selfishness of the common life. They 
live for the moment. As soon as we begin to do this 
life has a phantomlike appearance. Our existence 
is a never-ceasing stream of chance happenings. 
Our purposes come and go. Our desires are decep- 
tive. Our ambitions, even when realized, fail to 
bring us the happiness we expected. We win our 
victories of selfishness, and they turn to defeat be- 
fore our eyes. It is this that makes us cry out for 
something firm, for some sure support, for a life that 
is free from change. Mere work and activity will 



IO THE IMMORTAL AIM 

not bring us this. There must be an aim behind 
the work that cannot be touched by the multi- 
plicity of passing desires and the disintegrating in- 
fluences of time. 

" My honesty will go with me." When a man can 
say that he has found a clue. He is no longer a 
part of the furniture of the universe. He is a victor. 
We are continually called upon to decide which atti- 
tude we will adopt. Something happens to make us 
feel the indifference of nature. The Titanic goes 
down. For a moment we are stunned. We see, in 
startling form, the absolute disregard of material 
forces for certain things that we have taken for 
granted all our lives. What cares the great sea for 
our distinctions ? Great or mean, noble or vulgar — 
yes, we must say it, true or false, are all alike to her. 
What does this mean? Is there any such thing as 
moral worth? Does mental attainment count for 
nothing? Is the realm of spiritual values really 
non-existent ? 

We face the alternative squarely. We can give 
one of two answers to it. We can say that all these 
distinctions, which we have been accustomed to re- 
gard as the very essence of everything good and 
beautiful, are illusions, or else we can say that there 
is something in the life of man that is other, and 
more, than the material forces of the universe. How 
many men stood on the deck that day, as they saw 
it slowly sinking, saying to themselves with Mr. 
Honest, " My honesty will go with me " ? 



THE IMMORTAL AIM II 

It is not in vain that we have striven for this. 
It represents something that no disaster can destroy. 
What is there about it that gives it this power of 
permanence? For one thing it is not absorbed by 
the desires of the moment. It transcends life, yet 
is immanent in it. It takes possession of me, and 
in that way I make it my own. This is the paradox. 
When the immortal life lays hold on us we lay 
hold on immortality. We do not grasp it in any 
other way. I said some time ago that we would see 
later in what sense immortality is a possession. We 
are first held, occupied, controlled by something im- 
perishable. Then we find that this thing is a part of 
a Self that rises majestically above the shadows and 
defeats of time. 

This would suggest my answer to those who de- 
clare that the belief in a future life is the product 
of man's desire for happiness. Doctrines of " Para- 
dise/' and the sensuous imagery employed in pic- 
turing the heavenly state, have aroused much scorn. 
Serious minds have always turned away from them. 
As a result, the theory has been advanced that the 
very idea of permanence was born of these low de- 
sires. The shallowness of this explanation is seen 
at once if we apply it to Mr. Honest. Was he 
seeking an aim of mere sensuous joy? 

The immortal life! It shocks us in the midst 
of our smug complacency. It makes us dissatisfied 
with ourselves and our achievements. It calls us 
to difficulty, to strife, to sacrifice. It binds heavy 



12 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

burdens upon us. It reproaches us, if ever we com- 
promise with wrong. It hurls us against our en- 
vironment with grim and relentless resolves. Is 
this an illusion? It has been called such. But 
illusions are wont to please us with pictures of 
deceptive joys. Illusions promise us ease and sen- 
suous gratification. Here is something that brings 
trouble and toil. Yet its power over us is irre- 
sistible. Let no man tell me that this is a mere 
fiction of desire. Desire does not work that way. 

This, then, is one form of belief. It strives for 
an immortal aim. We are not all alike, and our 
approach to this question will be along different 
lines. The heart may bring us belief, through a 
sense of the worth of another personality. Reason 
may convince us, with arguments like those of the 
" Phaedo." But there will always remain some 
to whom these things do not appeal. Amid the 
activities of life, bearing its responsibilities and 
carrying out its enterprises, there are some who 
are not given to deep meditation. It is the will 
that is their interpreter. The question of survival 
beyond the grave only comes up at rare intervals 
in their lives. Have they no way of attaining 
belief? 

To them it must come through a vision of some- 
thing permanent in the common things of experi- 
ence. It will be a question of life itself, of its 
meaning and incentive. For we cannot attempt 
anything, we cannot trade, or study, or build, or 



THE IMMORTAL AIM 13 

buy, or play, without asking ourselves such ques- 
tions as these: " What object have I in this?" 
" What attitude shall I adopt toward the welfare 
and happiness of others ? " " Shall I seek imme- 
diate or distant ends ? " " Shall I sacrifice profit 
to principle or principle to profit?" Such ques- 
tions arise every day. We can only answer them 
through a vision of immortal worth. We must 
learn to say, " My honesty will go with me." Then, 
when that experience comes which is sure to befall 
us all, we will find that " one Good-Conscience " 
comes down to the river to meet us and help us 
over. The transition is not so terrible if we en- 
counter it in this spirit. 



II 



" LIFE " 



" I am come that they might have life, and that they 
might have it more abundantly." — John 10 : 10. 



II 

" LIFE " 

IN this way Christ announces his mission. " I 
am come that they might have life, and that 
they might have it more abundantly." The word 
" life " occurs very frequently in his teaching. He 
warns men by the solemn declaration, " Narrow is 
the way that leadeth unto life." " If thou wilt 
enter into life, keep the commandments," he says. 
" I am the bread of life." " I am the way, the 
truth, and the life." " The words that I speak 
unto you, they are life." It is evident that we 
have here an important word in the thought and 
teaching of the Master. 

Let us note, at the beginning, that it is no new 
word in the religious experience of his people. 
" What man is he that desireth life, and loveth 
many days?" asked the Psalmist. The voice of 
Wisdom was heard, crying, " By me thy days 
shall be multiplied, and the years of thy life shall 
be increased." An ancient proverb said of this 
same Wisdom, " Length of days is in her right 
hand." The Twenty-first Psalm had declared of 
the ideal King, " He asked life of thee, and thou 
gavest it him, even length of days forever and 

17 



l8 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

ever." The purpose behind one of the Ten Com- 
mandments was this, " That thy days may be long 
upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." 
Of the Law and the Commandments it was said, 
" Length of days, and long life, and peace shall 
they add unto thee." 

We now confront a very significant fact. Jesus 
seized upon this old word, but gave it a totally 
new meaning. In all his teaching we cannot find 
one instance where life means mere length of days. 
We are almost startled by this fact. The ancient 
records of his people were full of this conception. 
Yet he rejects it. His standard is qualitative, not 
quantitative. There is little value in a long life, 
if it is an empty life. It is life " more abundant " 
for which he would have men strive. Eternal life, 
to him, is not mere duration of time. It is a moral 
value, a spiritual state. " This is life eternal, that 
they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus 
Christ whom thou hast sent." When he cries, 
" Let the dead bury their dead," he is commanding 
an absurdity, unless we lift the word life out of all 
temporal and material associations. " This my son 
was dead, and is alive again," is the cry of the old 
parable. What do these words mean ? He was not 
dead. He was just lost to all things good and pure. 
It is evident that Jesus believed that a man may 
breathe, and walk the earth, and perform all the 
physical functions of existence, and yet be dead. 
If the divine within him is latent, if the powers 



" LIFE " 19 



of his soul sleep, he is lost to life. Life does not 
consist in the abundance of things which we pos- 
sess. Life is more than meat. If we would find 
our life, we must lose it. It is a moral quality. 
It is a spiritual energy. It is a process of soul de- 
velopment. The man to whom these things are an 
experience and a reality is alive. The man who 
has allowed them to depart from his soul is already 
dead. 

I remember reading in an old book of travel 
about a reception that was given in the city of 
Cairo, in Egypt, to Slatin Pasha. Slatin Pasha was 
the man who saved his life by professing conver- 
sion to Mohammedanism. After that act of re- 
ligious treachery General Gordon would have 
nothing to do with him. Gordon, the Christian 
soldier, the high-minded gentleman, stood firmly 
by his convictions. He refused to profess belief in 
the religion of the desert Prophet, and was cut to 
pieces by a fierce Mohammedan mob. Somehow 
the picture of that reception in Cairo took hold 
of my imagination. There was Slatin Pasha living 
on, with British and Egyptian honors heaped upon 
him, titled, prosperous, feted. " Poor Gordon ! " 
I cried. Is that right? Should I not rather cry, 
" Poor Slatin Pasha ! " Gordon alone is alive. 
Who envies the traitor, with his dangling medals 
and his decorative scarfs ? Better is it to pour out 
our blood on the sands of Khartum, than to con- 
tinue to live, and be morally dead. 



20 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

This is our judgment, when we confront the 
question squarely. Without honor, without self- 
respect, without virtue, without the approval of 
God, the most comfortable existence is but a blot 
upon the earth. Life, emptied of all that is pure 
and true, is a vapid and inanimate thing. This is 
the only death. To be showered with prosperity, 
to be glutted with honors, to be allowed to drag 
out a vain and vacant existence, bereft of all spir- 
itual content, is the worst form of death. When 
this happens, the man is dead, and does not know it. 

Such a man we have all seen. Behold him! 
Daily, imperceptibly, gradually the light went out. 
Under the pressure of physical needs, by the steady 
slackening of spiritual earnestness, through a series 
of minute acts of moral cowardice, by almost in- 
finitesimal yieldings to the demands of ease, he 
at last reached a condition where the soul was 
lost, and he was not conscious of it. He thought 
he was successful. He prided himself on his 
achievements. He cried, " I am rich, and increased 
in goods, and have need of nothing. ,, He could 
not see that he was poor, and wretched, and miser- 
able, and blind, and naked. Having gained every 
object of his heart's desire, having attained the goal 
of satisfaction, he himself was lost. The pure gold 
of loyalty to spiritual values, that had been tried 
in the fires of high endeavor; the white raiment 
of sincerity and candor, that covers the nakedness 
of the soul; the vision of divine perfection, that 



LIFE " 21 



shatters the serenity of a foolish pride — these he 
did not have. But these are the things that are 
the marks of one who lives. 

That is a strange ceremony in which men indulge 
in India. The maharaja is dead. For twelve days, 
according to the popular belief, the naked soul of 
the maharaja is doomed to hover around the funeral 
pyre. So the body is clothed in robes of state. 
His horse is near. The dancing-girls dance before 
the " poor white ashes." The musicians play among 
the cenotaphs. The golden hookah, the sword, the 
water-vessel, all are near. Everything is arranged 
for the convenience, the ease, the gratification of 
the great maharaja. But the maharaja is dead. 

If we could look with the eyes of Jesus, do you 
not think that we would sometimes see, in the 
social world about us, something that is spir- 
itually similar to this? Here is a man surrounded 
by all the elements of luxury. He has books, but 
no desire to read. He has works of art, but no de- 
votion to the beautiful. He owns stock in mills, but 
has no vital interest in the men who work in them. 
He pays for a pew in the church, but prayer is an 
unknown art to him, and he hires other men to 
make his sacrifice. He has a " name " that he lives, 
but only a name. In all that goes to make up life 
he is lacking. 

How much there is in organized society that 
tends to spiritual death. Our moral sensitiveness is 
ever losing its keen edge, because of compromise 



22 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

with polite sins, or because of surrender to estab- 
lished customs. The originality, the vigor, the 
freshness of our thought is lost, because such mental 
activities are ever breaking through the norms of 
tradition. So finally we reach that terrible condition 
where we never ask of a thing whether it is true, 
but only whether it is conventional. The same thing 
happens to our emotions. Deep-seated sympathy 
with the struggles of others is found to be an 
impossibility, because engagements multiply, trade 
absorbs, the days are short, and the problems of 
ministration are complex. So, while trying to live, 
we lose the secret of life. 

Take the salt whose savor has departed. Weigh 
it, examine it, handle it, measure it. It has not 
changed in appearance a particle. Yet yesterday 
it was fit for food; to-day it is worthless, trodden 
under foot. What has gone from it ? What is that 
ineffable, intangible, imponderable something that 
has slipped out of it? " Its savor," says Jesus. 
Merely that which makes it of value. Merely that 
which is its purpose in the economy of things. It 
possesses a certain quality, which constitutes its mis- 
sion. We turn to it when we wish to produce a 
certain effect in the culinary art. " Salt is good." 

Life is good. The thing which makes it good is 
to be found in its spiritual possibilities. It is good 
because we can fill it with love, truth, gentleness, 
and joy. It is good because it is a sacred vessel, 
that can carry certain divine values. It is good be- 



a ,. „ 11 



LIFE 23 

cause there is a savor of righteousness and good- 
ness, which belongs to its very essence. Let this 
depart, and, though its outward appearance remains 
unchanged, it is worthless. It is only fit to be trod- 
den under foot. All that is left of it belongs to the 
clay. To be sure we are dealing with something 
elusive and indeterminate. This spiritual " savor " 
of life is hard to understand. The " natural man " 
cannot apprehend it, said a great spiritual leader 
once. It slips away without our knowing it. When 
it is gone we have lost the one thing which is the 
end and the purpose of our being. 

There is a little incident which has been pre- 
served for us by the historian Eusebius, through 
which we can look as a window, and see this divine 
truth. During the reign of Gallienus there was 
stationed at Caesarea, in Cappadocia, an officer by 
the name of Marinus. At this time the Christians 
were enjoying peace. Marinus was promoted to 
fill a vacant position as centurion. Then there 
stepped forward some envious person, or perhaps, 
more likely, some sincere bigot, who said that 
Marinus was a Christian, and that no Christian 
could hold a Roman office, because he would not 
sacrifice to the emperor. Of course this was not his 
concern at all, but a discussion ensued, and the 
matter was taken to the court. The judge gave 
Marinus time to consider. As he left the tribunal 
he was met by the bishop, and together they walked 
to the church. In the church the bishop took hold 



24 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

of a volume of the Gospels, and holding it out he 
pointed to the sword of Marinus, and bade him 
choose. Marinus grasped the Gospels. On reap- 
pearing before the judge, he steadfastly adhered to 
his faith, and was put to death. 

I have called this incident a " window." Let us 
look through it. Every moral choice, every sum- 
mons to sacrifice, divides men into two classes. On 
one side it puts all those to whom life, as expressed 
in this choice, is a dark patch, set against a back- 
ground of eternal glory. On the other side it 
places all those to whom life, as expressed in this 
choice, is a dazzling brightness, with nothing but 
eternal night behind it. The former toil and sacri- 
fice and hope. The latter indulge and compromise 
and enjoy. The former count ease, comfort, and 
even physical existence to be nothing, because they 
live in the light of an endless love. The latter see 
nothing but a black and impenetrable curtain at the 
end of their physical existence, and cry, " Let us eat, 
drink, and be merry, for to-morrow we die." To 
this philosophy Jesus would say : " No ! not to- 
morrow. You eat, and drink, and are merry, but 
you are dead to-day." 

u We must live," men cry. Yes, we must live, 
but back of that lies another problem. What is life ? 
Answer that first, and then you are prepared to 
take up the corollary. Get the meaning of the word, 
and then construct your philosophy. Is life respira- 
tion, digestion, good sleep, quiet nerves, social plea- 



i( - ,^,„ JJ 



LIFE " 2$ 

sures, bodily comforts? Or is it truth, justice, 
integrity, purity, a love that lights up earth's dark- 
ness, a faith that looks into eternity? Until this 
question is settled there is no meaning in the words, 
" We must live." 

A tourist is in Rome. He spends an entire fore- 
noon in a little shop haggling for a string of corals 
that he could buy as cheaply at home. The forum 
and the Colosseum are but a short distance away. 
He has not seen them. The next morning his party 
starts for Florence. He is gone from Rome for- 
ever and has not seen its monuments of antiquity. 
Why did he go there ? Why did he cross the ocean ? 
It is strange that he never asks himself this ques- 
tion. It is the one thing he should have settled be- 
fore he set foot on the other side. 

" We must live/' men say. Those are serious 
words. They involve some conception of why we 
are here in the world. They go down to the very 
depths of a philosophy of destiny. It is possible to 
pass through the experiences and circumstances of 
life, and miss their meaning entirely. We do not 
remain in Rome forever. If any fact can be re- 
garded as established, beyond the possibility of 
denial, it is that we belong to a procession that 
moves on. Our time is limited. We may object to 
" doctrinal sermons," but we all have our doctrines. 
We show what we think of life by what we do 
with it. We choose, and in that choice we reveal 
what we believe. 



26 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

An Alpine climber sometimes reaches a place 
where torn garments and abrasions of the skin 
amount to nothing. He clings to the rocks, bruises 
his hips, scrapes his elbows, ruins his clothes, and 
counts these disasters as nothing, if he attains the 
desired height. He does not seek such experiences. 
He just accepts them when they come. If he said 
anything about them, it would be this, " They are 
the price of the peak." " Earth gets its price," said 
Lowell. He might have said that so does heaven. 
If life has any worthfulness, any secret, any divine 
content, it is our business to find out what that is, 
and be ready to pay for it. This is what Jesus 
meant by the parable of a merchant who sold every- 
thing that he had to get possession of a pearl. 
There is a " goodly pearl " hidden in this life of 
ours. What is it ? 

Failure to solve this problem has been the degra- 
dation of nations. It has given birth to those times 
of unbridled pleasure, that are ever the signs of 
national decadence. Lust for enjoyment seizes upon 
mankind as a sort of frenzy. The sections of so- 
ciety that set the example for the rest fling them- 
selves headlong into the delirious pursuit of luxury. 
Enticed from paths of truth and honor, they go 
wandering in the magic gardens of pleasure. This 
is national death. It was once the habit of historians 
to try to prove that the luxury of ancient Rome was 
the cause of her downfall. In all probability this is 
not true. One thing, however, we can say, if we 



a r T ^^ >j 



LIFE 27 

look at the matter with the eyes of Jesus. When 
sensuousness, lust, the pride of display, the passion 
for unreality, the greed of wrongful gain, seized 
upon the Eternal City, though the fear of her mighty 
legions was felt in the uttermost parts of the earth, 
she was dead. 

" I am come that they might have life, and might 
have it more abundantly/' These words express 
the conception which Jesus had of life. Its sign 
was emancipation from all slavery to the sensuous, 
and sincere devotion to spiritual desires and moral 
qualities. The cry of resurrection is heard in the 
words, " This my son was dead, and is alive again." 
He has flung off the fetters of his sensuality. The 
memory of the higher joys in the Father's house 
has conquered the lust that held him so long in the 
far country. This is life. It is to fill the passing 
hours with the purposes of eternity, to find the 
gold of truth in the slag of circumstance. He who 
does this has already entered upon the endless life. 
The quickened energies of the mind, the aroused 
activities of the heart, the ruddy glow of an earnest 
devotion to principle, are the signs of our resurrec- 
tion. They show that we have heard the trumpet 
call that summons faith from the grave of unbelief. 
They show that we have entered upon that new 
career, the gift of the spirit of Christ to us, whose 
motto is not " Long Life ! " but " More Abundant 
Life." 



Ill 



"A LIFE TO LET 



" When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he 
walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. 
Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence 
I came out, and when he is come, he findeth it empty, 
swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with 
himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, 
and they enter in and dwell there; and the last state of 
that man is worse than the first." — Matt. 12 : 43-45. 



Ill 

" A LIFE TO LET " 

WHEN the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, 
he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, 
and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into 
my house from whence I came out, and when he 
is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. 
Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven 
other spirits more wicked than himself, and they 
enter in and dwell there; and the last state of that 
man is worse than the first." 

This is as true a picture to-day as when drawn 
by Jesus in Palestine so many centuries ago. 

For one glorious moment this man stood at the 
gates of liberty. He won his battle. He took up 
arms against a tyrannous habit, and vanquished it. 
He played the man, and experienced the joy of 
breathing the air of freedom. What a sublime mo- 
ment is that which experiences a moral triumph ! 
Will anything compare with it? But this man for- 
got that to empty the soul of evil is not to fill it 
with good. So the very hour of his victory proved 
to be his undoing. The negative nature of his re- 
form left him restless, discontented, unemployed. 
The old channels, cut in his character by long years 

31 



$2 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

of habit, still invited the forces of his being to 
return. Having nothing else to do, unable to find 
satisfaction in spiritual vacuity, he rushed back 
into his old condition, with appetites and desires 
intensified by a brief vacation. He was the victim 
of " A Life to Let." 

I doubt if a deeper psychological analysis was 
ever made than this. Behind the popular notion 
of " unclean spirits " we read a lesson that lies 
at the basis of all our modern science of psychology. 
It is the tremendous truth of the inhibition of 
ideas. It is the never-dying problem of the balance 
of psychic forces. In proportion as the soul has 
within it a love of adventure, a restless ambition, 
a passion for the heroic, a delight in danger, a de- 
sire to mount to heights unattained, in that propor- 
tion will it be capable of some of the lowest deeds 
and vilest practices that mark the limits of human 
baseness. Unless given tasks worthy of its powers, 
it will plunge inevitably into depths of wickedness. 
A criminal career is often but the protest of a 
powerful nature against the limitations of igno- 
rance and the monotony of emptiness. Let us 
look through this parable to-night, and see what 
we can learn about the unclean spirits of Vacuity. 

The first thing I find in it is a denial of the gospel 
of negation. The world is full of people whose 
whole claim to goodness is based on what they 
did not do. Their virtue is like that of a sand- 
heap, that bears neither pigweed nor grain. Their 



A LIFE TO LET " 33 



purity is like that of a blank sheet of paper, that 
tells neither lies nor truths. If life had no pos- 
sibilities, if the soul had no destiny, if divine powers 
within us never cried out for divine tasks without 
us, these people would be candidates for the calen- 
dar of saints. 

Suppose a farmer were to say : " If I sow my 
wheat in the ten-acre lot, the birds may get it; if 
I sow it in the back meadow the fences over there 
are poor, and the cows may break in and trample 
it down; if I plow up the pasture, over behind 
the woods, and put it there, the ground is low, 
and it may rot. I guess, on the whole, the wisest 
thing to do is to leave it in the bin in the granary." 
That is an excellent decision, save for one thing. 
How about the broad acres that are lying idle? 
Have they no destiny beyond the production of 
thistles and mullen-stalks ? How long will it take 
for the taxes to eat them up, if they are doing 
nothing ? 

I have only one complaint to make against the 
man whose claim to goodness is based on the evil 
he has avoided. He is not good. Goodness is 
something positive. Goodness does not come from 
the negation of wickedness, any more than lettuce 
is sure to grow in the place in the garden where 
we root up sheep-sorrel. It grows if we plant it. 
It is the product of a definite effort. It is the 
reward of a particular line of activity. So is good- 
ness.. We may stand in the temple of our self- 
c 



34 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

satisfaction, and cry with perfect truthfulness that 
we are not like a lot of other men, " extortioners, 
unjust, adulterers/' and all the while be densely 
blind to the fact that " seven other devils/' of pride 
and conceit and laziness and scorn and selfishness 
and contempt and inhumanity, have crept into the 
garnished chambers of our purity, and are holding 
high revel while we pray. 

Of what value is it to a man that he has re- 
frained from this wrong, or kept out of that wicked- 
ness? Does this tell anything about him? Be- 
cause a man never ran an engine off a track in 
his life, it does not follow that he ever ran one on 
a track. Because a man never made a mistake in 
the conjugation of a Greek verb, it does not follow 
that he ever mastered the Greek alphabet. Sup- 
pose you wanted a bookkeeper. There might come 
to you a man who could not count up to twenty- 
five, applying for the position, and saying with 
perfect truthfulness that he never in his life made 
a mistake in the addition of a column of figures. 
Of course not. He never learned to add. I con- 
fess that I feel very much as you might under such 
circumstances, when I meet a man who is able to 
recite a long list of the dishonest deacons he has 
met, of the preachers he has known to be frauds, 
of the Sunday School teachers who have fallen 
into sin. I want to ask : " Well, what of that ? Did 
you ever try to attain any goal of goodness, or 
reach any height of righteousness ? " 



" A LIFE TO LET " 35 



There is very little danger of falling until we 
begin to climb. It is the man who aspires to the 
peaks who walks on the edge of the precipice. It 
is the man who loves the land of vision who is 
caught in the treacherous snows. These men some- 
times fall. The only safe men are men who are 
nothing but safe. If they remain in the valleys with 
the cows they will never fall. But let us not forget 
that theirs is a bovine virtue. It is bought by 
abandonment of their manhood. What right have 
they to say anything about the disasters on the 
heights ? Only the men who are climbing have any 
business to pass judgment on those who fall. Let 
me tell you how to distinguish the men who are 
climbing. When a comrade loses his grip and 
plunges into the depths, instead of making merry, or 
exalting themselves, they pause for a few moments 
in awful suspense and before they go on they utter 
the prayer, " God be merciful ! " 

Another thing I learn from this parable. I find 
in it an explanation of restlessness. Here was an 
emancipated man walking through dry places, seek- 
ing rest, and finding none. It is the picture of an 
unemployed energy. It speaks of the misery of 
emptiness. If you strike my arm when it is hanging 
idly at my side, the muscle will pain me for a 
long time. If you strike it when it is tense and 
rigid, engaged in some occupation, strained by 
some labor, I shall scarcely feel it. The worries, 
the annoyances, the blows of life fall upon the soul 



36 THE IMMORTAL AIM 



with much the same result. The man whose ener- 
gies are bent toward some ideal, whose hopes are 
busy, whose faith is active, whose love is engaged 
in toil, will scarcely know it when the stroke of 
misfortune falls. Even great calamities may be- 
fall such a man, without utterly incapacitating his 
courage. But once let him settle down to the busi- 
ness of avoiding trouble, and he will be just the 
man whom disaster is forever following. His very 
efforts to escape all slander will cause the sting 
of calumny to remain for a long time in his soul. 
His very desire to take life easy and enjoy him- 
self will make him extremely sensitive to the pain 
of each mishap. 

The bright new tools which I bought for my 
cabin in the country began to get rusty the first 
winter. As long as they were in use during the 
summer they kept their brilliancy. Discontent is 
a kind of rust, that attacks an inactive life. A man 
retires from business, fancying that he will be 
happy, now that he has nothing to do. Before the 
first week is over the rust of restlessness gets after 
him. He begins to find that his new life has noth- 
ing in it. The slack and passive joys of indolence 
grow insipid because of their very sweetness. He 
longs for the old, rough life, when he had obstacles 
to face, problems to solve, risks to run, triumphs to 
win. There was joy in that life. He had an appe- 
tite, when he had no time to think of his dinner. 
He could sleep, when he had to crawl out of bed 



" A LIFE TO LET " 37 



in the dark each morning to get to work. But when 
that delightful time came, of which he had been 
dreaming so long, that time when he had nothing 
on earth to do but to eat and sleep, he had as con- 
stant companions two new friends, Indigestion and 
Insomnia. 

Moths do not attack a garment while it is being 
worn. It is the coat that is locked up for safe- 
keeping, the dress that is tied up in a bundle and 
laid away on the top shelf of a closet, that comes out 
by and by utterly ruined. Discontent is a germ 
that breeds rapidly in the stuffy atmosphere of 
inactivity. It hunts out the hiding-place of the 
indolent. Why do we not remember this when we 
are busy ? People who are engaged with life's toils 
and problems, observing that there is a certain 
amount of wear and tear on happiness in the stress 
and drudgery of daily duties, are quite likely to 
imagine that they can keep it longer if they hide 
it. So they pack it away in some corner of selfish- 
ness, or hang it up in some garnished chamber of 
the soul. Then the moths of misery begin to get 
after it. The last state of these people is worse 
than the first. 

There is another thing I find in this parable. It 
is a challenge to give God the heroic side of life. 
This man allowed the divine energy and fearless 
faith that drove the unclean spirit out of his breast 
to sink into uselessness. With a world full of prob- 
lems and opportunities, with society calling for 



38 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

moral heroes, with a kingdom of righteousness out- 
side his doors, he gave the new-born power no 
great task to perform. He did not connect the 
resurrection force of purity within him with the 
divine demands of duty without him. He did not 
see that the solution of his own problem was but 
the first sentence in the story of a redeemed world. 
I believe we face a new era in religion. Within 
the walls of the church we are hearing a new cry. 
We face the dawn of an age of social respon- 
sibility. The immoralities of custom-ports are not 
things outside the realm of religious duty. The 
shocking deeds of a Sugar Trust are a challenge 
to those who pray, " Thy kingdom come ! w The 
tremendous problems of municipal regeneration are 
calling for a Christianity that is morally militant. 
The church has a larger mission to perform than 
was thought a generation ago. To sing songs 
of thanksgiving to God for saving " a wretch like 
me," is all right, but it does not cover the whole 
area of religious duty. To dry the tears of sor- 
row, to cheer the heart of the unfortunate, to re- 
lieve the distress of poverty, is noble, but we can- 
not find the spirit of victory here. Religion is not 
simply an ambulance, to follow in the rear of the 
march of civilization. It ought to lead. It is what 
men saw in it in olden times — a cloud-pillar, to 
lead us on to sublime accomplishments, to social 
freedom, to realms of opportunity, to a national 
destiny. 



it . , ^^^ ^^ , „_ J> 



A LIFE TO LET 39 

The most serious objection I have to President 
Eliot's " Religion of the Future " is its lack of 
prophetic challenge. It attempts to prophesy, but 
does not do it. It analyzes, but does not command. 
With nearly everything he says about outgrown 
dogmas I find myself in agreement, but when I 
finish reading I am ready to cry, " Has the re- 
ligion of the future nothing to do but to thank 
God for having cast out an unclean spirit of super- 
stition ?" I confess that I weary of one kind of 
" liberality." There is a liberality that is just a 
mawkish atmosphere of theological satisfaction, a 
tepid environment of cultured contentment that 
relaxes the moral nature. If one per cent of the 
people in our city, who call themselves "liberal/' 
would consent to unite for serious purposes, we 
would march with mighty strides toward the king- 
dom of righteousness. 

There is a condition of soul that is like a piece 
of untwisted cotton cord, that is all frayed out. 
It is just an aggregation of slack shreds. If you put 
an ounce of weight on it, it will break. When will 
we learn that "liberality" is not looseness? For 
men and women to call themselves " liberal," when 
the slightest weight of responsibility breaks the in- 
tegrity of their will, is to drag down a great and 
noble word. You might as well try to tow a ship 
with oakum, as to endeavor to drag the world on 
toward its destiny with the sort of spirit that is 
generally called " liberal." It is not enough to cast 



40 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

out old dogmas. When the mind is " empty, swept, 
and garnished/' it is in its greatest danger. Only 
belief will conquer the world. Before us goes the 
pillar of fire. There are barriers yet to be crossed. 
There are obstacles now to be faced. There are 
discouragements to be met in these very days of 
ours. For this, we must have boldness, resolution, 
invincible courage, a self-reliant faith. 

I once heard a man say in prayer-meeting, " All I 
want to do is just to get to heaven." If you had 
asked him what he meant by " get to heaven," 
he might have been confused. In the end he would 
have spoken of escape from temptation, of the 
lifting of burdens, of the end of strife. He did 
not realize the stagnation that would exist in such 
a paradise. He could not foresee that " mansions 
in the skies," of which nothing could be said, ex- 
cept that they are " empty, swept, and garnished," 
would be most tiresome places. We would soon get 
weary of their neutral tints, and colorless virtues. 
A moment's reflection will reveal the truth in the 
cry of Whittier's character : 

God forgive me if I say 
It would be hard to sit there night and day, 
Like an image in the Tribune, doing naught, 
With these hard hands, that all my life have wrought 
Not for bread only, but for pity's sake. 

The philosopher Leibnitz, in a letter to Christian 
Wolff, says that if future blessedness does not con- 



a . , TT ^ „,^ r „ 11 



A LIFE TO LET 41 

sist v in progress, there can be no destiny for the 
blessed, except a state of stupefaction. Is not that 
true? If you think you could be happy sitting on 
a throne, playing a harp, throughout all eternity, 
just try it for a week next summer down at the 
seashore. The foolishness of this dream was dis- 
covered thousands of years ago in India. Certain 
Sankhya teachers declared, away back there in the 
twilight of human thinking, that the man who gains 
admission into the heavenly world will soon dis- 
cover that there are higher stages than that which 
he has attained, and that even heavenly joys are but 
a preparation for nobler ones, there are heavens 
beyond heaven. 

Do we not observe, on earth, that a man does not 
escape the laws of his being by journeying in dis- 
tant lands? Whether he tries to climb a mountain 
in Switzerland, or face the Berbers of Africa, or kill 
tigers in the jungle of India, he takes himself with 
him. If he has surrendered to injustice at home, 
he will turn back in fear when he faces the first 
couloir in the Alps. If he has bowed down to 
political chicanery or commercial mendacity in his 
native land, he will lose his manhood the moment 
he comes into the presence of the free Bedouin of 
the desert. Finely did Plato say that a change 
of skies does not change the character. Do you 
imagine it will be any different on the long jour- 
ney which we all expect to take some day? For 
my part, I find great wisdom and inspiration in 



42 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

the lines of Matthew Arnold, entitled " Immor- 
tality ": 

Foiled by our fellow-men, depressed, outworn, 
We leave the brutal world to take its way, 
And, " Patience ! in another life," we say, 

" The world shall be thrust down, and we upborne." 

And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn 
The world's poor, routed leavings? or will they 
Who failed under the heat of this life's day 

Support the fervors of the heavenly morn? 

No, no ! the energy of life may be 
Kept on after the grave, but not begun ; 

And he who flagged not in the earthly strife, 

From strength to strength advancing, — only he, 
His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, 
Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life. 



IV 



THE LIGHT OF IMMORTALITY " 



"If a man die, shall he live again?" — Job 14 : 14. 

" Our Saviour Jesus Christ . . . hath abolished death, 
and hath brought life and immortality to light through 
the gospel." — 2 Tim. 1 : 10. 



IV 
" THE LIGHT OF IMMORTALITY " 

IF a man die, shall he live again ? " This ques- 
tion of Job has been asked in all ages. You can 
see it written on the limestone cliffs back of the 
old lost city of El Kab. You can hear it in the howl 
of the winds under the crumbling domes of the 
Tombs of the Sheiks at Assuan. I have gone half- 
way around the world, and the last thing I saw 
before sailing was the falling of tears on the cold 
sod under the elms of New England, and almost 
the first thing I heard after landing was the wail 
of the Arabs among the sandy mounds out on the 
margin of the desert. On those strange funeral 
reliefs, that lined the Ceramicus between Athens 
and Eleusis, we catch a different glimpse of the 
light-hearted Greek from the one that has come 
down to us in history. These bits of art, the pro- 
ductions of the common workmen of the long ago, 
have about them a pathos that is inexpressibly 
touching. The extending of the hand to hold back 
the departing, the sad farewell, the gathering of 
friends, the peering into the gloom, all tell the old 
story. " If a man die, shall he live again?" 
The belief in immortality sometimes escapes us 

45 



46 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

because of its very vastness. Never was this more 
common than to-day. Astronomy comes to us to 
tell of suns journeying through space, according 
to the receding and lengthening waves of the spec- 
troscope, at the rate of about a thousand miles a 
minute, whose distances from us in the abyss of 
night are so great that it will take fifty thousand 
years for them to be moved an appreciable distance 
on the map of the heavens. Thought staggers at 
such a conception, and we cry with the ancient 
singer of Israel, " What is man, that Thou art 
mindful of him ? M I step on an ant-heap, and kill 
a hundred or two of industrious little creatures. 
I boil some water, and put out of existence count- 
less multitudes of animalcules. Is my life, when put 
in figures given us by the distance of the stars Mizar 
and Alcyone, of any more importance to the uni- 
verse than that of these creatures? Like hills and 
clouds and rivers, am not I too held and governed 
by unbending laws, in whose enactment I had no 
voice, and whose inert power makes and ends me? 
Am I anything more than a victim of the forces 
that fashion the trees and wear dow T n the moun- 
tains, that mold the hail and govern the winds? 
Sometimes, from the presence of the great powers 
of nature, we come forth ready to cry : 

Mountains and ocean waves 

Around me lie, 
Tower the mountain chains 

Forever to the sky: 



" THE LIGHT OF IMMORTALITY " 47 

Fixed is the ocean immutably — 
Man is a thing of naught, 
Born but to die. 

A life of nothing, nothing worth, 
From that first nothing ere our birth 
To that last nothing under earth. 

Materialism is often a religion. With profound 
humility it belittles man's place in the universe. 
It assures us we are but grains of dust, comminuted 
and cast off by the great grinding mechanism about 
us. What have we to do with our destiny? Like 
a log of wood, carried on the current of a stream, 
so do we pass through time. From the laboratory 
of science this theory comes forth, assuring us that 
we are just a chance concourse of atoms, organized 
into human form — atoms that yesterday may have 
entered into the composition of a thorn-bush or a 
bit of limestone. Mere material effects of physical 
causation, our end is dust. In exquisite and imag- 
inative strains we find this thought again and again 
in the musical stanzas of Omar Khayyam: 

For I remember stopping by the way 
To watch a potter thumping his wet clay : 

And with its all-obliterated Tongue 
It murmured, "Gently, Brother, gently, pray!" 

And has not such a story from of old 
Down Man's successive generations roll'd, 

Of such a clod of saturated Earth 
Cast by the Maker into human mould? 



48 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

Is that all? Am I just a " clod of saturated 
earth? " Let me tell you why I believe I am not. 

In the first place, / believe in immortality because 
of the soul's persistence. If I am a mere collection 
of material particles, the dissolution of those par- 
ticles, I grant, will mean my extermination. If 
there is nothing in me but certain delicately con- 
structed and nicely strung nerve-wires, for the trans- 
mission of sensation and thoughts, then the destruc- 
tion of these wires will amount to my destruction. 
But I am something more than these: for long 
after the experience has passed away, and each 
separate particle in my body has changed, I still 
retain a memory, showing that my true self is 
something more than the organism through which 
it works. Science is ever talking to us about per- 
sistence. No force is ever destroyed, it says. When 
a cannon-ball strikes an iron plate with a crash, the 
energy that sent it whizzing through the air, we are 
told, is not lost; it is only transformed. When a 
stone falls over a precipice and strikes on the pile 
of rocks at its base, the momentum of its fall does 
not vanish utterly; it is simply changed into some 
other channel. When a tree is cut down in the 
forest, and sawed into lumber, or cut up for the 
fireplace, the power that expressed itself in trunk and 
branch is not annihilated; it is just made to express 
itself in some other way. 

Why cannot we apply this law in a still higher 
way? There are certain forces that never have 



" THE LIGHT OF IMMORTALITY " 49 



expressed themselves through the crass and mate- 
rial substances of earth, and never can. There is no 
atomic weight of love. There is no specific gravity 
of faith. There is no Troy measure of honesty. Do 
these forces therefore perish ? When Socrates died, 
and with a brave farewell to the few friends gath- 
ered about him in the hour of martyrdom declared 
that he was not going out into utter darkness, what 
became of the wonderful mind, the robust moral 
earnestness, the pure spiritual insight, the invincible 
love of righteousness, that for so many years had 
been the light of Athens? When Copernicus died, 
what became of the courage, the endurance, the 
large-minded earnestness, that perforated the walls 
of the humble chamber in Allenstein in order to 
observe the passage of the stars across the meridian ? 
When Savonarola died, what became of the faith, 
the prophetic insight into the future, that enabled 
him to walk into the fires of death, declaring to 
the Bishop of Vasona that it was not within the 
power of the great Church of Hildebrand to sepa- 
rate him from the " Church Triumphant " ? When 
John Huss died, and the old prayer of the " Kyrie 
Eleison " was stifled in the smoke, what became of 
the self-sacrifice that gave up the rectorship of the 
University of Prague, in order to become a wan- 
derer on the earth ? Are these powers, so spiritual, 
so sublime, so godlike, any less likely to endure than 
those which manifest themselves in the rock, the 
tree, or the river ? I cannot think so. Atoms, how- 



50 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

ever finely organized, do not say, " I love ! ,! "I 
believe ! " "I worship the Highest ! " "I sacrifice 
my own interests to the general good! " " I refuse 
to bow before triumphant wickedness ! M " I cast 
in my lot with oppressed and downtrodden good- 
ness ! " Here, I believe, we stand in the presence 
of the highest energy manifested to man. Of that 
energy I declare : " It persists ! It cannot be blotted 
out!" 

Again, / believe in immortality because of the 
soul's endowments. How few of the powers of our 
humanity are required just to get along in this 
world! The residue of our faculties, the over- 
plus of ability, the forces upon which we never 
make levies to supply our material wants, are in- 
finitely more than those which are called into requisi- 
tion by the daily needs of the body. 

A man goes up to Moosehead Lake on a fishing 
excursion of two weeks. He charters all the ships 
in Boston and New York harbors. He exhausts all 
the quarries in the Adirondacks, and in New Hamp- 
shire and Vermont. He takes with him an army of 
builders and stonecutters, and all the best architects 
in the country. You ask him what all this is for, 
and he answers that he intends to remain in the 
woods for a few nights, and must build him a 
little fisherman's shack. What would be your con- 
clusion? Either that the man was crazy, or that 
he really intended to build something greater. Man 
comes into this world with powers and faculties 



"the light of immortality'' 51 



within him for building something whose sublimity 
and beauty extends far beyond our loftiest con- 
ception. What shall we say of the philosophy that 
asserts that all these powers — of disinterested love, 
of moral heroism, of far-reaching righteousness, of 
self-sacrificing generosity, of godlike compassion, 
were merely intended to build a fisherman's shack 
beside the shores of time? To doubt our immor- 
tality is to charge the Ruling Power of the universe 
with madness. Why build an engine that exhausts 
the working forces and the ingenuity of the Corliss 
shops, in order to run a grindstone, and sharpen a 
jack-knife? The end is not equal to the expendi- 
ture. Why construct a being with the ability to 
accomplish divine and infinite things, and then give 
him nothing to do but to earn bread and butter ? 

Again, / believe in immortality because of the 
soul's unity. Each person in this church is a spe- 
cial and particular entity, possessed of an indi- 
viduality, the like of which is not to be found any- 
where else in the world. We may arrange men in 
classes. We may note their likenesses. We may 
group them according to the characteristics which 
they share in common. When all this is done we 
shall find that we cannot get away from the fact 
that the essence of each one's character is different 
from that of any one of his fellows, and the one 
thing that makes him a man is something in which 
no one else in the universe can have participation. 

I ask you to describe Washington. You relate 



52 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

incidents of his early life. You quote from his 
biographers, Weems and Ramsay. You give com- 
ments on his personality by this great historian, and 
that. You tell of inspiring deeds of patriotic de- 
votion, that are kept as treasures in the memory of 
a nation. When all this is done the real Wash- 
ington has escaped us. Aristotle well said that " the 
individual is the indefinable." Bosworth may fol- 
low Johnson around day after day, and note down 
every trifling remark that falls from his lips, and 
still the " Great Bear " escapes us. Ellinwood may 
take down in shorthand the prayers of Henry Ward 
Beecher, when the soul of the preacher is poured 
out in supplication to the infinite, and may follow 
him into the prayer-meeting to gather together the 
little incidents of autobiography that escape his lips, 
and still the real Beecher gets away from us. When 
we try to describe an individual we are shut up to 
stereotyped expressions that do not express. 

Ask the lover for a description of his sweetheart, 
and you will hear the same old tender expressions, 
that have been heard in every land, and in every 
language, since the world began. You remember 
Bayard Taylor's description of the song the soldiers 
sang in the trenches of Sebastopol, on the night 
before the battle : 

They lay along the battery's side 

Below the smoking cannon: 
Brave hearts from Severn and from Clyde, 

And from the banks of Shannon. 



" THE LIGHT OF IMMORTALITY " 53 

They sang of love, and not of fame; 

Forgot was Britain's glory : 
Each heart recalled a different name, 
But all sang, " Annie Laurie." 

It is always the same old story, of one who is 
" the fairest that e'er the sun shone on " ; and yet 
if you ask' the lover if another could be found just 
as fair, who was in every way the exact reproduction 
of the dear one, could he transfer his affections, what 
will he reply? He will say that there is no other, 
and if there were it would not be She. That this 
individuality, which is the source of so much that is 
sweet, and noble, and divine, in our lives, can 
come to an end some day, is to me a thing un- 
thinkable. 

/ believe in immortality because of the soul's as- 
pirations. Here we are fighting away, with secret 
faith and dauntless courage, resisting tyrannies, con- 
quering greed, mastering selfishness, only to be 
stricken down ere the battle is well begun. If that 
is all, we can apply in tragic manner the words of 
Christ, " This man began, but was not able to finish." 
This life is but a suggestion. The poem stops 
in the middle of a line. The chord is broken at the 
very beginning. What can we believe save this: 
We shall take it up again, when we wake with 
brighter hope and braver faith. We shall carry its 
pervading idea, which here has been but an intima- 
tion, into movements more glorious and strains more 
sublime. The chords in the soul that give forth 



54 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

life's sweetest music, that thrill with love, vibrate 
with triumph, ring with joy, and peal with hope, 
are somehow tuned to a belief in immortality. 
Therefore I declare that a revelation of God is 
required, not to prove immortality, but to disprove it. 

Why look up, if all above is Blank? Why extend 
our pleading arms to Vacancy? Why utter our 
prayers to Emptiness ? Why sob out a cry for for- 
giveness to a cold, dumb, frozen Necessity? A be- 
ing with such tendencies and powers implanted with- 
in him, if there be nothing to correspond to them 
beyond him, is the supreme jest of the universe — a 
phantom of falsity decked out in cap and bells, that 
he fondly dreams are emblems of royalty. Nietzsche 
is right. Life is just a joke, and this little planet of 
ours is merely a side-show in the ridiculous farce of 
the universe. 

Nietzsche is not right. Truth, not deception, lies 
at the heart of things. For every aspiration we find 
satisfaction somewhere. When a migratory instinct 
drives the lark back from his southern home, it is 
not a vain hope that leads him, for he finds the 
region of the old nest at last. When a mysterious 
longing begins to move in the heart of the winged 
seed of the elm to reach up through the soft yield- 
ing soil into a world of warmth and brightness 
above, it is not deceived, for the young shoot soon 
finds the higher realm. When the larva of the 
Antiopa grows restless within the dark wrapping 
that enfolds it, and longs to break its bonds and 



" THE LIGHT OF IMMORTALITY " 55 

be out on the wing like a detached flower, it is not 
yielding to a delusion and a mockery, for the hour 
soon comes when it spreads its wings among the 
fragrant blossoms of the meadow. Nor can I be- 
lieve that the aspirations of the human soul are 
merely a sublime deception. The unawakened pos- 
sibilities of life, the power and faculties not yet 
realized, the dreams and longings of heights unat- 
tained, and all the stirrings of better and larger 
things that visit the soul — these were not given to us 
to tantalize us, and mock us, and lead us after a 
phantom. I know not how, I know not when, but 
I know! What frost-bound faculties and sleeping 
forces lie latent in the unexplored depths of the soul, 
who can tell ? What flowers shall bloom, what fra- 
grance shall come, what joy and sweetness and 
splendor shall be ours, when life sweeps around into 
the May of God's love, it hath not " entered into 
the mind to conceive." 

How do the rivulets find their way? 

How do the flowers know the day, 

And open their cups to catch the ray? 

I see the germ to the sunlight reach, 

And the nestlings know the old bird's speech ; 

I do not see who is there to teach. 

I see the hare from the danger hide, 

And the stars through the pathless spaces ride ; 

I do not see that they have a guide. 

He is Eyes for All who is eyes for the mole ; 

All motion goes to the rightful goal ; 

O God ! I can trust for the human soul. 



V 



KEEPING LENT 



" Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a 
sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they 
may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, 
They have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, 
anoint thine head, and wash thy face; that thou appear 
not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in 
secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward 
thee openly."— Matt. 6 : 16-18. 



KEEPING LENT 

JESUS does not oppose fasting. As an expres- 
sion of humility and self-restraint he saw its 
value. He also saw its emptiness when there was 
no such spirit to express. There were some to 
whom the whole thing was theatrical. They wore 
their sackcloth with pride. The rent garment, in- 
tended to indicate a broken spirit, was to them a 
badge of honor, or a decoration of authority. The 
ashes, symbolic of burnt hopes and vanished de- 
sires, were seen on people whose souls were full 
of the impulses of selfishness and greed. 

So Jesus said to his disciples : " If you would 
keep a fast, do not let any one know it. Live as 
you would in a time of feasting and joy. Put on 
the emblems of happiness. Express your grief 
and repentance to God. Do not make a show of it. 
Conceal it. True penitence dreads display. It 
shrinks from the crowd of onlookers. It is su- 
premely and intensely individual." 

Have you violated your sense of right? God 
knows all about that. Have you met with loss and 
disaster? It will not help matters any to hang out 

59 



60 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

a sign. That may bring you a little professional 
sympathy, but other people have their problems. 
Take hold of yours with the help of the unseen 
Father. Be courageous and hopeful. Carry into 
the world a spirit of resolution. Things will right 
themselves by and by. " The Father, who seeth in 
secret, will reward thee openly. " 

I write this down as a rule: In everything that 
touches the deepest emotions there is a tendency 
to allow the expression to take the place of the 
reality. That is why tragedy is the highest form 
of the histrionic. How can people go to a place 
where a gruesome murder is enacted before them 
on a stage, and call that " amusement " ? We watch 
Othello slay Desdemona, and pronounce it " splen- 
did." It is just a story. Of course we do not 
imagine for a moment that it is real. We " enjoy " 
the scene of the bloody hands in Macbeth because it 
is such a superb representation of the horrible. 
But the word " hypocrite," which Jesus uses in 
this passage, means an actor. What he is trying 
to say is that when the same thing happens to the 
solemn truths of religion they are degraded. 

Let us take a few of the tragedies of life, and 
see how they tend to become theatrical. Take 
poverty. There are people who wear their rags 
of adversity with as much pride as the queen of 
England feels over her coronation robe, or the 
archbishop of Seville takes in his ecclesiastical gar- 
ments. It is a business to these beggars. They 



KEEPING LENT 6l 

extract money from people by their " get-up." 
Their capital is a threadbare garment, or a physical 
deformity. 

The most hideous creatures of this type are to 
be seen near the sacred sights in Jerusalem. Some 
of the wealthy mendicants of that city are facto- 
tums in its life. They own property everywhere. 
Who supports them? Russian pilgrims, who have 
walked a large percentage of the way to the Holy 
Land, sleeping at night on the bare ground under 
the old olive trees, have poured a stream of alms 
into the boxes of these deceivers. Of course, if 
we believe that we can buy our way into heaven 
by our gifts, there must be some one to receive. 
You can see the same thing enacted on the steps 
of cathedrals in Europe, and on the sidewalk near 
churches in Philadelphia. I have seen these beg- 
gars working under a padrone, or " boss." He was 
hiding around a corner. They would make their 
pitiful plea, secure the gift, and then carry it to 
him. This was a Beggar Trust. 

In the meanwhile what happens? The world 
is full of poverty that is real, but we do not know 
it. There are unwritten stories of heroism dis- 
played in battles with despair. The hero employs 
no " press-agent." You would never suspect a fight 
was going on. Self-respect seals the lips. The 
old garments are mended and brushed up. The 
home is kept as attractive as possible. Self-denial 
is the common experience of the day. It has to be, 



62 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

in order to keep the children dressed and educated. 
The whole atmosphere of this home of intense 
poverty is one of dignified and heroic hope. If you 
enter it you will find your thought of humanity ele- 
vated. Yes, the world is full of poverty. The good 
Father, who sees in secret, knows that. But it does 
not " appear unto men to fast." 

Take grief. I well remember a sight in Cairo 
that attracted my attention. It was the first time 
I had seen it. A procession of wailing women 
passed. They uttered moans, and shrieks, and 
heart-rending cries. They flung their arms aloft, 
tore their hair, and w T ent through all the extrava- 
gant manifestations of grief so common in the 
Orient. I was told they were hired mourners. 
There are women who make a business of mourn- 
ing. They take it off your hands for you. You 
pay them to show the world how broken-hearted 
you are, and then you can go off to the cafe, and 
sit there all day, smoking your narghile. 

Does that shock us? Why should it? In the 
country town in which I was born in Wisconsin 
it was customary to hold funeral services in the 
church. People felt that they were cheated by a 
private funeral. The neighbors came from far and 
wide to see how the mourners took it. I was once 
the victim of that system. I was just a little fel- 
low. A brother was sick with a fever. He asked 
me to sit by the bed and fan him. I wanted to go 
out to play, and refused. That night he died. At 



KEEPING LENT 63 

the funeral I felt like the lowest and vilest criminal 
on earth, but I shut my teeth, and refused to cry. 
I would not satisfy that crowd by any such display. 
I was called " cold-hearted/' but I did not care. I 
was proud of my ability to hold in. 

There is plenty of grief in the world. The Father, 
who sees in secret, knows that. But we cannot 
identify grief with its expression. It is not measured 
by the breadth of a band of crape. Custom has its 
dictates, which we can obey, or reject. Sable gar- 
ments, worn for the proper number of months, are 
no indication of the length of memory. We lay 
them aside. The theatrical manifestation of grief 
is over. Twenty years pass. A half a century is 
gone. Some day there comes to us an experience 
that brings up a whole train of events from the 
shadowy realm of the past. 

Take failure. How many people peddle their 
failures. They buttonhole you on the street. They 
corner you at the club. They wander into your 
office in the busiest hour of the day. You say: 
" There comes Watkins. I suppose I must listen 
once more to the story of how he invested a thou- 
sand dollars in Missouri Pacific." Or, " There is 
poor Barton. I wonder if he still has his balance- 
sheet with him, to show how much money he lost 
last year." It is a sort of business with these men. 
They traffic in their troubles. They trade them to 
you for a sufficient amount of sympathy. If they 
do not get it, they feel that they have been wronged. 



04 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

Some of them have an excellent story. They 
have rehearsed it often. All they need is a little 
low musical accompaniment to make it most ef- 
fective. You have to listen to it down to the fourth 
scene of the fifth act. How distressing are these 
people with their failures, who " appear unto men 
to fast." 

But we must not conclude that all men are like 
these. There are men who would feel humiliated 
by the slightest confession of failure. They dare 
not admit it even to themselves. Though they hover 
on the edge of bankruptcy, they do not draw back 
in terror, but drive right on. You would never 
suspect that there was any crisis in their affairs. 

Some one said of Bliicher that he seemed stronger 
after each defeat. Nine times he was beaten in 
battle, and nine times he rallied his scattered forces 
and stood more firm and formidable than ever. We 
all know men like that. They march back resolutely 
into the field. If there is a cup of disappointment 
for them to drink, they drain it in their own tent, 
and then resume operations. 

There is a vast army of these people known only 
to God. They are victims of social injustice, but 
they refuse to blame circumstance. They do not 
wail and condemn. Though they bear an aching 
heart and an anxious mind, they appear contented. 
They are distressed by misfortune; they are dis- 
appointed in friendship; they are victims of harsh 
misrepresentation ; they feel behind them the haunt- 



KEEPING LENT 65 

ing of some hereditary weakness; they see their 
dreams of glorious achievements vanish in the day- 
light of reality. All this happens " in secret." 

Such people find it impossible to expose their life 
problem to the gaze of others. They do not want 
help, especially when it involves a condescending 
sympathy. The last citadel of character would 
be abandoned if self-respect surrendered. So they 
cover up everything. They appear happy and con- 
tented. Battling with fatal diseases that are slowly 
sapping their life strength, fighting financial dif- 
ficulties that threaten to break up the home, strug- 
gling to bear up under the loss of a life incentive, 
they say nothing, and take up the routine of life 
bravely and cheerfully. 

Let me contrast two men. Both of them had 
wealth, so we can easily eliminate that side of the 
situation. One is Robert Browning. Many men 
have undertaken to write his biography, and the dif- 
ferences of opinion have been great. On one subject, 
however, there has been absolute agreement. With- 
out exception, all admire the brave, hopeful, manly 
spirit he displayed in the presence of difficulty. 
He was ridiculed mercilessly for the obscurity of 
his thought. He waited nearly fifty years for recog- 
nition as a poet. He married an invalid, who en- 
tertained what seemed to him strange opinions on 
spiritualism and other subjects. But his manly 
devotion, despite this difference, caused their mar- 
riage to be pronounced " ideal." For her sake he 



66 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

lived the life of an exile. Was there any struggle ? 
Where shall we look for it? Certainly not in any 
minor strains in his poems. He never posed for 
sympathy. He never prepared a stage-setting for 
his sorrows. We see indications now and then of 
the wrestlings of a heroic spirit. We feel that there 
was something personal in the praise of one " who 
never turned his back." At the end we hear just a 
little note in the " Prospice," as he faces the last 
grim enemy, " I was ever a fighter." We admire 
him for this, and for his picture of the reunion with 
his companion. 

What a contrast there is between Browning and 
Byron. The latter was ever exploiting his troubles. 
He knew just when to draw the curtain on the act. 
There is no finer piece of passionate satire in our 
language than " English Bards and Scotch Re- 
viewers." Some of the deepest pathos in poetry 
was written about the gross immoralities of this 
man. The slightest criticism stung him to reply. 
He loved to pose. We feel the lack of a genuine 
sincerity in his weird exhibitions of emotion. 

All this has been preparatory to our topic. We 
have entered on the period of " Lent." In the Gos- 
pel according to Matthew, we read that Jesus fasted 
forty days in the wilderness, in the time of his temp- 
tation. It is not easy to reconcile this statement 
with certain theories of the person of Christ that 
have been held all through the centuries. Why did 
he fast? It was surely not for the sake of any one 



KEEPING LENT 6j 

else, for no one was with him. What was back of 
this temptation ? You seldom find any attempt made 
to meet this problem. The fact is that it is an 
unmistakable testimony to the reality of the strug- 
gles of our Master. Whatever his own battles 
may have been, they were real and not theatrical. 
They were fought out in the presence of Him who 
" seeth in secret." 

At first there was strong opposition to the prac- 
tice of fasting in the Christian church. It was re- 
garded as a custom of the old religions, to be 
abandoned by the believer in Christ. The early 
literature of Christianity says almost nothing about 
it. But about one hundred and fifty years after the 
death of Christ we find the practice becoming quite 
general. The church took the story of the battle 
in the desert, and made a ceremony of it. She set 
aside a time of fasting and penitence. She speci- 
fied days, adopted rules of abstinence, and entered 
into details of observance. 

Then the same thing happened which we have 
observed in the case of poverty, grief, and failure. 
The histrionic spirit took hold of it. There was 
sham repentance, theatrical humility, the mockery 
of sacrifice. The Lenten season has been one of 
the favorite subjects of humorists and satirists. 
They have delighted in the contrasts it furnishes. 
They have pictured the ingenuity by which a ban- 
quet can be furnished to the pious epicure, without 
breaking any rule of the fast. The show, the 



68 THE IMMORTAL AIM 

routine, the shallow self-denial of the luxurious, 
have all been favorite subjects for cynical comment. 
To eat no flesh on a certain day, to cease a routine 
of amusement with the expectation of resuming 
it as soon as the specified period is over, to add a 
few extra hours of attendance at services in church, 
have been pointed out as productive of nothing 
serious or beautiful. 

This attack has not all come from the spirit of 
unbelief, outside the area of religion. It was Isaiah 
who cried, " In the days of your fast ye find plea- 
sure." It was Robert Herrick who took from Isaiah 
the picture of a platter piled high with delicacies, 
from which the holy gormand goes forth " to show 
a downcast look, and sour/' The seers and teachers 
of mankind have incessantly warned against this 
contrast. It is better to break through the whole 
thing, than to make a mere performance of it. 

There is still one thing to be observed. A cere- 
mony as old and universal as that of fasting must 
have back of it some great truth. The materialists 
of our day, as usual, have tried to find that truth in 
something physical. They have called attention to 
the benefit to health of periods of abstinence, and 
have found in this fact the origin of the custom. 
But this is superficial. 

The truth behind Lenten observance is to be 
found in the spirit it seeks to cultivate. Does it 
produce real penitence? Does it bring the great 
throng that observes it into the presence of God 



KEEPING LENT 69 

with a consciousness of their shortcomings? This 
is the test. If it does not, it were better to abolish 
it. Indeed, it is already abolished by that law that 
condemns everything hollow and heartless. But 
still the fact remains that no one goes to him in vain, 
at any time, in any way, with a confession of weak- 
ness, or a cry of need. " A broken and a contrite 
heart, O Lord, thou wilt not despise/' 



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